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Maps of the American West

Zebulon M.Pike's 1810 A Chart of the Internal Part of Louisiana

A Chart
of the
Internal Part of Louisiana
Including all the hitherto unexplored Countries
by Zebulon Montgomery Pike
(1895 editions of the 1810 maps)

U.S. Army Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike left St.
Louis July 15, 1806 on his expedition to the Spanish borderlands while
Lewis and Clark were still making their way home, somewhere on the upper
Missouri River. The Governor of Louisiana Territory, General James
Wilkinson, had directed Pike to explore the country of the Plains
Indians and find the headwaters of the “Arkansaw” and Red Rivers.
Besides instructions, Pike was also provided with Alexander von
Humboldt’s map of the Great Plains and the Spanish territory of the
Southwest, details of which made their way into Pike’s 1810 maps, to the
consternation of von Humboldt. Regardless of the intrigue and ulterior
motives on the part of Wilkinson that continues to swirl around his
expedition, Pike’s travels resulted in several maps of historical
importance describing the country directly west of St. Louis to the
Rocky Mountains and south into Spanish New Mexico.

Pike saw his mission as one “to attach the Indians
to our government and to acquire such geographical knowledge of the
south-western boundary of Louisiana as to enable government to enter
into a definitive arrangement for a line of demarcation between that
territory and North Mexico.” Pike’s addition to the area’s geographic
knowledge was soon transformed into a series of beautifully drawn maps
by Anthony Nau. They offered a picture of the area based on actual
exploration instead of rumors or the reports from trappers and
voyageurs. Despite Pike’s many errors and misconceptions these
documents remain significant achievements in the mapping of the American
West.

But Pike’s maps did contain errors and
misconceptions that bedeviled cartographers for decades. He insisted
that the eastward flowing rivers of both the northern and southern Great
Plains such as the Platte, Yellowstone, Arkansas and Red in addition to
those flowing west towards the Pacific like the Columbia or south as
does the Rio Grande all had a common continental source, reinforcing a
long held geographic delusion. For Pike they were situated in a tightly
confined area where “I can visit the source of any of those rivers in
one day.” This misinformation would find its way into commercial maps
until later expeditions like that of Major Stephen H. Long provided more
accurate information.

Pike’s maps were valuable in redefining the Great
Plains’ dimensions, particularly its east-west distances, with more
accuracy then previous maps of the region and were the first such
documents to bear the stamp of “official surveys.” They also suggested
the hopefulness Americans invested in their interpretations of the
West. If a common source for western rivers existed, this
optimistically suggested an easy route to the Pacific. Pike’s
expectations were not unusual for an American whose preconceptions of
the West were drawn from his knowledge and experience with the nation’s
eastern geography. As geographer John Logan Allen notes, early mapping
was often “mapping of the geography of hope and expectation rather than
the geography of reality.” This kind of cultural “slipperiness” so
often found its way into maps.